The Government ordered major retailers in England to stop giving away single use bags for free in October 2015, and ordered proceeds to go to charity.

Retailers with 250 or more full-time equivalent employees have to charge a minimum of 5p for the bags they provide for shopping in stores and for deliveries, but smaller shops and paper bags are not included.

Tesco's own Bags of Help scheme has provided £33 million to 6,400 local community projects since 2015 despite the store giving out 1.5 billion fewer single use bags in that time.

Lidl replaced single use bags with 5p reusable ones in July of this year, and the Sainsbury's 5p version is reusable and recyclable.

Waitrose still offers 5p single use bags and 10p bags for life.

Early figures collected in 2016 showed that customers in England took home six billion fewer bags in the first six months after the rule change.

At the end of 2016, the Marine Conservation Society said the number of bags found on British beaches had almost halved since the policy was introduced.